Luke looked at the object in the box before him, lovingly caressing the brightly colored tissue paper that was nestled around it. Long fingers reached in and touched it, the elongated gadget at once a part of himself, and the target of his desire. His breathing slowed and he was acutely aware of the single strand of jet black hair that touched his soft, lightly bearded cheek. Blue eyes twinkled with longing and he withdrew his hands as they shook, barely able to contain himself.

He grabbed the lid and threw it back on the box as the front door slammed shut in some distant part of the apartment. He dived to his feet and threw the nondescript box onto a top shelf as his husband walked into the kitchen and set down his briefcase. The automatic tea-maker chimed as it finished steeping Nicholas’s evening chamomile tea, right on time. He took the cup and set it on the synth-oak table as Luke emerged from his room. A friendly greeting died in his throat at the serious, almost mournful expression on Nicholas’s face.

“Luke. Sit down. I want to talk to you.” Nicholas’s voice was soft, but the words hung in the air like a command, making Luke feel less than equal. Luke sat, the dying sunlight catching his foil-fabric blue leggings. He clasped his hands together in anticipation, wondering what Nicholas might have in mind. A vacation? A new job? Or perhaps he just wanted to apologize for leaving the toilet roll holder empty, again.

“I want a divorce.”

Luke sat at the table, frozen in place by those four cold words as day turned to night. The sun rose and set as dust settled around the apartment, the silence of the room nothing less than stifling. Nicholas came and went, removing his things from the apartment with surgical precision. Even the tea-maker went missing, leaving a hole in the wall with wires protruding from it. The kitchen was incomplete, just like him. Nicholas had found his special object, apparently, and it had driven their marriage off a cliff that Luke hadn’t seen on the map. The cruel irony of the situation was not that Nicholas had rejected Luke for the object; but that he desired one of his own with a jealousy so powerful it had burned out their love with the force of a supernova.

Luke stood and wandered through the hallway to his bedroom, where the bed had been conveniently separated into two, leaving him one half to sleep on. Everything these days seemed to be conveniently designed for detachment in case of divorce, to be separated into two units at a moment’s notice.

He’d even been born that way: incomplete, a piece of a finished being. He’d been sixteen before he could even admit the man inside was there, twenty before he’d finished transitioning. Married at twenty-one, to someone in the same situation as himself. Another colony boy who’d been born into a female body. It’d seemed like something to bond over, at the time. Hormones, surgeries, and transitioning, a dead name to dispose of, and a new one to choose.

Luke reached up to the shelf and pulled down the box. Unwrapping it one final time, he looked at the object with sorrow. It was a perfectly crafted prosthetic penis, made only by special order on Earth. Once attached, the penis would make a connection with the user’s own neural pathways, making the attachment capable of every pleasure and function of the real thing. It had cost a lifetime’s wages, carefully squirreled away while they’d scraped by, paycheck to paycheck.

He’d bought it for Nicholas.

Luke looked at it one last time. He knew he could keep it, but he wasn’t capable of such selfishness, even now. Though it wouldn’t make him come back, Luke’s final gift might give Nicholas the chance at happiness, out there in a spectacular, infinite universe.

With loving hands, he wrapped up the last piece of himself he would ever give to his husband.

I’m starting a new feature called Fiction Corner, where I’m going to post pieces I’ve written that are too short to be published elsewhere. I hope you enjoy these small tales: be sure to let me know what you think!

Small Comfort

The asteroid loomed into view. With a touch of a button on my craft’s control panel, the forcefield that disguised my home as a tiny, lifeless rock shimmered, allowing the shuttle to pass through. The lush, green grassland of this tiny terraformed oasis welcomed my return as I brought the shuttle in to land. I couldn’t operate the doors fast enough, and fidgeted as the airlock opened with painstaking sluggishness.

I’d never been so happy to see two faces in my entire life, or breathe the crisp, fresh air of my home world. I’d witnessed the wars first hand that were tearing the galaxy apart. I’d seen fields of bodies—human, robot, and alien—lives thrown away as if they were no more than ears of corn to be harvested for the Gods.

My wife Elaina and my husband Jace stood at the bottom of the ramp. I almost fell in my rush to meet them. Elaina held me steady as Jace wrapped his arms around both of us. We needed no words—they were fully appraised of the ongoing situation. I would not speak of such horrors here, and sully my sanctuary with the violent politics of warring worlds.

They led me inside our large farmhouse, and we wasted no time getting reacquainted with one another. I needed their human touch to remind me I could still feel. Their beauty erased the mental images of entrails and their perfume chased away the stench of rotting corpses still fresh in my mind. When I came, Elaina’s fingers caressing me and Jace buried deep inside, the whiteness of my climax felt like a new beginning—as if the calamities I’d witnessed had been nothing more than bad dreams.

“Come in, Captain.” The unwelcome voice intruded into my space, but I knew I couldn’t ignore it. I pulled the virtual-reality headset off and my gut clenched as a wisp of smoke drifted into the field tent.

“Go ahead, Lieutenant.” My voice was husky, but I cleared my throat and repeated myself. A nearby mortar blast startled me. I imagined Elaina clutching my shoulders, giving me strength. Jace looked on from across the room, offering me support with his presence. They may not be real, but they reminded me of what I was fighting for, gave a purpose to the endless death and destruction I bore witness to every day of my life.

Two releases in the same week! These are just small ones but good things come in small packages! Or at least I tend to think so.

First up we have my story Contact Theory in the MLR Press anthology Hope For Pulse. I had a lot of feelings after the Orlando shooting. Contact Theory is my raw heart put to paper in the aftermath. It’s about a man who is afraid of androids dealing with his own phobia and learning to fall in love where he least expects it. I hope you pick up this anthology as the proceeds are going to help victims of the shooting who need all the help they can to get back on their feet.

The 2016 Queer Sci Fi Flash Fiction anthology, “Flight”, is here, and I have a story in it! Earthbound is a 300 word story about Ellie Sanders, the asexual, aromantic character mentioned in the opening chapter of The Forbidden Zone. I actually want to write a book about her because her life is so interesting, but for now you’ll have to live with her take on the news that she’s not going to the planet Valeria after all.

A 300-word story should be easy, right? Many of our entrants say it’s the hardest thing they’ve ever written.

Some astonishing stories were submitted—from horrific, bloodcurdling pieces to sweet, contemplative ones—and all LGBTQ speculative fiction. The stories in this anthology include AI’s and angels, winged lions and wayward aliens. Smart, snappy slice of life pieces written for entertainment or for social commentary. Join us for brief and often surprising trips into 110 speculative fiction authors’ minds.

The book us available in eBook form (4.99), and will soon be available in paperback with b/w illustrations inside (12.99) and in a special collector’s edition with color illustrations (24.99).

There are many different ways to write, and for a long time I’ve wanted to make a game. So I’ve been playing around with a visual novel creator called Ren’py, and I’ve made my first game! It’s a very short lesbian love story made using freely available assets that I’ve called The Forest Elves. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, and is a free download. Don’t expect a whole lot, since it’s just a test, but I hope to make something more detailed and professional in the future; turns out I love to code!

I could have fallen in love with anyone. Anyone but Tyler Greyson. He’s the C.E.O’s son, barely eighteen years old and already twisting me around his little finger. Now he wants me to attend his party. I’m only a low-paid robotics maintenance tech, fifty years old and twice divorced—what could a boy like him possibly want with a man like me?

I’m about to find out.

Available now on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited!

Excerpt:

“My office.” It was always a command with Tyler, never a request. I loved the way he rode in on his bike and bossed me about, even when we’d not seen one another for days. I didn’t know what he did with his time outside of keeping an eye on the down and dirty of robotics engineering and repair—had to be college, surely?—but the moment he showed up, any thoughts I had of finishing work were off the table. We’d often chat in his office, me all greased up and filthy, him bright with the joys and promises of youth, his skin unblemished by the callouses and the dirt under my fingernails that marked me as a blue collar worker.

I followed Tyler to the office like it was any normal day. Norman was out on break. Blueprints lay scattered across the desk, detailing a new model, the Gigolo Maxx. Tyler seemed to loom close behind me, like a shadow, and I was scared my proximity would reveal my attraction to him. The hairs on my neck stood up, the first swell of arousal making my prick half-hard. I sat down at the desk and crossed my legs, hoping to hide any bulge that might be blindingly obvious in my overalls. I felt like a dirty old man preying on the young, a creeper who belonged behind a two-way mirror as Tyler undressed and played with his impossibly fine cock—

My thoughts were not helping the prick trapped between my legs, now painfully pressing into my leg. I hoped the pressure would make it die down, but even pain seemed like pleasure when he was around.

“I’m having a party this weekend.” Tyler’s statement hung in the air and I wasn’t sure if it was an invitation or simply a conversation starter. His pants were stretched taut against his crotch as he sat down and it took all my efforts not to stare at the flaccid but impressive prick outlined there, like it was a package begging to be unwrapped. I wanted to crawl under the desk and beg to service him. I had to remind myself that there was no way Tyler would want my old mouth on him, even if he was into guys. He deserved some other rich young heir to rule by his side.

“House party while your father’s away?” I asked casually.

“Something like that.” There was a glimmer in Tyler’s eyes and I wasn’t sure if it was excitement or something else. “Wanna come?”

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh out loud or not. Me, at a party? I imagined a bunch of young men and women dancing and getting laid while I hung out in the corner with a beer waiting for the night to be over and the hideous noise they called modern music to end. Maybe I’d even study the blueprints for the Maxx like a complete bore. What madness compelled this young man to invite me, of all people, to a party?

“I’m not sure—“

“Don’t worry. You’ll love it. I promise.” Something about Tyler’s voice made my prick harden further, the way his invitation sounded like a threat—or a promise. I didn’t know if I was imagining it, lost in my haze of desire, but his eyes seemed to have a ‘come hither’ look to them.

“Yes. Of course I’ll come.”

Tyler smiled sweetly before pushing a piece of paper across the desk with an address, date, and time scrawled on it. I took it like it was an invitation to some clandestine meeting and tucked it in my overall pocket like a precious treasure that could not be lost. He was up and gone before I could say another thing, barely giving me a glimpse of his ass before he mounted his motorbike and rode off into the day.

Andrea Missanaugh lives on dystopian Earth’s exploration ship the HAND-5500. Lost in deep space and subjected to the monotony of survival under a regime that still holds the distant ship in its iron grip, Andrea has lost all hope of living a happy life and waits for her silent mental rebellion to be discovered and the inevitable death that will follow.

Then she’s whisked away from the HAND-5500 by two curious aliens from a planet called Evalaque: the President’s daughter, Ledieven, and her gentle partner in crime, doctor and scientist Jacq. Ledieven wants more than friendship, however, with Jacq and Andrea—something that is forbidden on Evalaque, where a fertility crisis has taken hold. Ledieven is one of the last fertile women on Evalaque and her mother will go to great lengths to press her into a socially acceptable marriage.

Excerpt:

The Hand’s iron grip extends to the outer reaches of space. Even here, in a tiny space-faring exploration vessel, their orders are absolute and inescapable. Only my thoughts are my own, and only barely so. It won’t be long before we’re all wearing the Mind-Scanner 3000 by decree.

I’m sorry, I mean the Glasses. The Glasses were supposed to let you watch Net feed on the go, but they stopped being mandatory equipment years ago. Rumor had it that they were just a tool by which the Hand could watch us. Our innermost thoughts. Our feelings. Our fears. Our private revolutions. Thank fuck they considered all that information too unwieldy to collect on a daily basis. Or they just ran out of working pairs. Who knows?

I hear the buzzer, loud and clear, a long sound designed to be just painful enough to the ears to get us out of bed. I stop feigning sleep, open my eyes, and jump down from my bunk. A red pair of overalls covers me inelegantly, like I’m some kind of prisoner instead of one of the Hand’s most privileged citizens. I get to see deep space. I’m lucky. Yeah.

When Quill crash lands on Marutuk, he has only a few days to repair his ship and escape, or he risks losing his job. Hunter is a cyborg who guards the junk yard that has the parts he needs, and stubbornly refuses to allow Quill to steal from his mistress. Stuck at an impasse, Quill must find a solution… or find himself frozen out of work in yet another sector.

This was a light-hearted read and I loved it. It was fun from the first page through to the last. Quill is a lovable rogue with the ability to manipulate metals. Hunter is stiff and stubborn with a soft spot. Watching Quill break down Hunter’s shields was immensely satisfying. Throw in some humor with the native creatures of Marutuk, and I found myself smiling practically the entire time I read this.

Junk Mage doesn’t break any new ground, and isn’t particularly long, yet I felt it was just the right length for the story it was telling. It didn’t outstay its welcome, or feel the need to tell the entire life story of its characters. This was a great little book that should put a smile on any reader’s face. If I could sum up this review in one word, that word would be ‘satisfying’. If you’re on the fence about this one, pick it up. You won’t be disappointed.

The cover is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, too. I wasn’t surprised to learn that the cover artist was Natasha Snow, who created the amazing cover for my book ‘The Forbidden Zone’. The editing was solid as well. If this is the sort of quality readers can expect from NineStar Press, I’m paying attention.

As you might guess from the title, this is a retelling of Cinderella with a trans girl as the main character. Also, what a beautiful cover!

I very much enjoyed this story and the way it made me feel. It’s very sweet and generally feel-good (aside from the wicked stepmother and sisters, obviously). Ella is a damsel who helps herself out of distress (with a little help from a fairy godmother) and I liked that as well. It’s very much fairytale territory, with a few hand-waves of logic required to really believe in the story, but the whole idea of fairytales in this context is to deal in wish-fulfillment, and this does it well.

Ella goes to the ball as her true self and falls in love with a princess. And nothing stands in their way. We don’t learn if their relationship would be acceptable in their society or if it has any chance of lasting, but maybe we don’t need to. Ella gets to be herself, escapes the horrible excuse for a family that have treated her like garbage and wins the heart of the woman she loves. It didn’t really matter to me that everyone (aside from her family) seemed to accept Ella without question – in fact, it was kind of refreshing.

So yes, Cinder Ella is a fairytale, and some of its logic relies heavily on magic and on people being much more accepting than they are in reality. If you’re the kind of reader who needs everything explained, this might not be the tale for you. But if you’re looking for a break from heavy politics and issues and just want a story where the trans girl ends up happy, Cinder Ella might be the antidote you’re looking for.

This was a book I was really hoping to love. I have a hard time finding F/F fiction and the premise of this was interesting. I really thought this might turn out to be a good partner romance where a bad situation makes two soldier friends realize they have more between them than they expected. Instead what I got was my most hated trope of them all – a vulnerable person falling in love with an abuser/manipulator and it being sold as a HEA when they ride off together into the sunset.

I stumbled across this book on a list of LGBT Dystopian fiction and tried the sample. I was hooked from the very first page. I bought the book right away and proceeded to devour it.

The author has created a fantastic bisexual book with focus being on the plot and intricately crafted world and characters. Imagine a 1920s-style city woven with Scandinavian flavor and a court filled with intrigue, politics, religion, and extra-marital affairs. Myadar, the central character, is a woman who grew up outside the city and is unaware of the sweeping religious revolution brought about by the konunger, in which temples have been destroyed and one of the gods, Tyr, is worshipped at the expense of all others. Myadar is summoned to court by her husband Reister and quickly swept up into a world she doesn’t understand, one where her son is stolen from her by her spouse and where she has no power, only that which she can win with her charm. She quickly overcomes her despair at being held hostage and makes the most of her situation, using every tool at her disposal to play the games of the court better than those who seek to use her for their own ends.

I loved Myadar. She has enough weaknesses to be human, and yet is resourceful and intelligent. Watching her learn to twist those who seek to play her is gratifying, especially when she’s a thorn in Reister’s side. She’s not afraid to use her body to achieve her ends, but at the end of the day her real strength is her understanding that the people who matter most are worth more than revenge.

I wouldn’t call The City Darkens a romance, yet there are definitely romantic elements that end satisfyingly enough. Myadar has sex for love and sex for power, with both men and women. This might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and yet I loved how complex and exciting the romantic and sexual tension could be. This isn’t a warm-fuzzy-feelings soulmates-forever kind of book, and honestly I found that refreshing. This book was a real page-turner and I couldn’t put it down. I was glued to the page, wondering how things could possibly work out in Myadar’s favor.

I was sad to see that this book seems to have been largely overlooked, with few Goodreads reviews. I urge you to try it out if you love politics, intrigue and plot in your LGBT fiction. I’m currently reading the sequel and loving that, too. I cannot recommend this book highly enough and I’m pretty sure it’s going to make my best books of the year list.